'Ender's Game' blasts off with $27M at box office

This publicity photo released by Summit Entertainment shows Asa Butterfield in a scene from the film, "Ender's Game."

"Ender's Game" began its big-screen mission at the box office in first place.

The Lionsgate sci-fi adaptation starring Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford as intergalactic soldiers earned $27 million in its opening weekend. The film is based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Orson Scott Card.

"Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa" came in second place with $20 million in its second weekend, bringing the domestic total of the Paramount hidden-camera comedy featuring Johnny Knoxville to $61.6 million.

The weekend's other new major new releases, CBS Films' "Last Vegas" and Relativity Media's "Free Birds," took the third and fourth spots. "Last Vegas," which stars such Hollywood veterans as Morgan Freeman and Michael Douglas, won $16.3 million at the weekend box office, while the animated romp "Free Birds" gobbled up $15.8 million.

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The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Monday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Rentrak, are: